New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2010 population of 1,585,873[2] living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.5 km2), or 69,464 residents per square mile (26,924/km²), more dense than any individual American city. It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 per capita income above $100,000.[3] Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in land area.

Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums, and universities. It is also the location of the United Nations Headquarters. It is the cultural and economic center of New York City and the New York metropolitan area, hosting the seat of city government and a large portion of the area's employment, business, and entertainment activities. As a result, residents of New York City's other boroughs such as Brooklyn and Queens often refer to a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city",[9] despite the comparable populations between those boroughs, and the fact that these boroughs are also part of the city proper.

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The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon).[13] A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "island of many hills" from the Lenape language.[14]

It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped.[18] Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present day Albany.[19]

Bird's eye panorama of Manhattan in 1873. The Brooklyn Bridge was under construction from 1870 until 1883.

A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutchfur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625 construction was started on a citadel and a Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam).[21][22] Manhattan Island was chosen as the site of Fort Amsterdam, a citadel for the protection of the new arrivals; its 1625 establishment is recognized as the birth date of New York City.[23] According to the document by Pieter Janszoon Schagen our people (ons Volck)—Peter Minuit is not mentioned explicitly there—acquired Manhattan in 1626 from Native American Lenape people in exchange for trade goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth 24 US$, though (by comparing the price of bread and other goods) it actually amounts to around $1,000 in modern currency[24] (calculation by the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam).

In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony.[25] New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653.[26] In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II.[27] Stuyvesant and his council negotiated with the English to produce 24 articles of provisional transfer that sought to guarantee New Netherlanders liberties, including freedom of religion, under English rule.[28][29]

The Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city "New Orange". New Netherland was ceded permanently to the English in November 1674 through the Treaty of Westminster,[30] in exchange for Run Island which was the long-coveted last link in the Dutch nutmeg trading monopoly in Indonesia.[31]

New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada.

Tammany Hall, a Democratic Partypolitical machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped park in an American city and the nation's first public park.[35][36]

During the American Civil War, the city's strong commercial ties to the American South, its growing immigrant population (prior to then largely from Germany and Ireland), anger about conscription and resentment at those who could afford to pay $300 to avoid service, led to resentment against Lincoln's war policies, culminating in the three-day long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history, with an estimated 119 participants and passersby massacred.[37]

The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France.[38][39] The new European immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city was a hotbed of revolution, syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization.

In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a road connection across the East River. In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County from Westchester County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed.[40] In 1898, when New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City of Greater New York", Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York state legislature created Bronx County, and New York County was reduced to its present boundaries.[41]

The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did additional bridges to Brooklyn. In the 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century.[44]

The period between the World Wars saw the election of reformist mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after 80 years of political dominance.[46] As the city's demographics stabilized, labor unionization brought new protections and affluence to the working class, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under La Guardia. Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline today, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the GE Building.

Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom, which led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, including Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town, which opened in 1947.[47] In 1951, the UN relocated from its first headquarters in Queens, to the East Side of Manhattan.[48]

Like many major U.S. cities, New York suffered race riots and population and industrial decline in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation as a graffiti-covered, crime-ridden relic of history.[49] In 1975, the city government faced imminent bankruptcy, and its appeals for assistance were initially rejected, summarized by the classic October 30, 1975 New York Daily News headline as "Ford to City: Drop Dead".[50] The fate was avoided through a federal loan and debt restructuring, and the city was forced to accept increased financial scrutiny by New York State.[51]

Starting in the 1990s, crime rates dropped drastically, with murder rates that had reached 2,245 in 1990 plummeting to 537 by 2008, and the crack epidemic and its associated drug-related violence under greater control.[53] The outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market.[54]

On September 11, 2001, two of four hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The towers collapsed. Also collapsing this day was 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane. The other buildings of the World Trade Center complex were damaged beyond repair and soon after demolished. The collapse of the Twin Towers caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 people, plus those on the planes. Since September 11, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored; many rescue workers and residents of the area have developed several life threatening illnesses, and some have already died.[55]

A memorial at the site was opened to the public on September 11, 2011. A museum is currently under construction at the memorial and was scheduled to open in September 2013. One World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, is also under construction, as well as the other planned buildings on the site.

On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction in the borough, ravaging portions of Lower Manhattan with record-high storm surge from New York Harbor, severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of Manhattanites and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems. The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the borough and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[56]

The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a micaschist known as Manhattan Schist. It is a strong, competent metamorphic rock created when Pangaea formed. It is well suited for the foundations of tall buildings and the two large concentrations of skyscrapers on the island occur in locations where the formation is close to the surface.[57] In Central Park, outcrops of Manhattan Schist occur and Rat Rock is one rather large example.[58][59][60]

A modern redrawing of the 1807 version of the Commissioner's Grid plan for Manhattan, a few years before it was adopted in 1811. Central Park is absent.

One neighborhood of New York County is contiguous with The Bronx. Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan as an island between the Bronx and the remainder of Manhattan.[64] Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from The Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.[65]

Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times, and much of the natural variation in topography has been evened out.[14]

Early in the 19th century, landfill was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street.[66] When building the World Trade Center, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m³) of material was excavated from the site.[67] Rather than dumping the spoil at sea or in landfills, the fill material was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City.[68] The result was a 700-foot (210-m) extension into the river, running six blocks or 1,484 feet (450 m), covering 92 acres (37.2 ha), providing a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) riverfront esplanade and over 30 acres (12 ha) of parks.[69]

Geologically, a predominant feature of the substrata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near the midtown district, dips down lower between 29th street and Canal street, then rises toward the surface again under the Financial district. This feature is the underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial district areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas, as their foundations can be sunk more securely into solid bedrock.

The Commissioners' Plan of 1811, called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each 100 feet (30 m) wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue in the west. There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village. The numbered streets in Manhattan run east-west, and are 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. The typical block in Manhattan is 250 by 600 feet (180 m).

According to the original Commissioner's Plan there were 155 numbered crosstown streets,[70] but later the grid has been extended up to the northernmost corner of Manhattan, where the last numbered street is 220th Street (Manhattan). Moreover, the numbering system continues even in The Bronx, north of Manhattan, despite the fact that there the grid plan is not so regular; there the last numbered street is 263rd Street.[71]

A consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge).[73] On separate occasions in late May and early July, the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level.[73][74] A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoos and aquariums in the city, is currently undertaking The Mannahatta Project, a computer simulation to visually reconstruct the ecology and geography of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609, and compare it to what we know of the island today.[75]

Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), or the far more recent vintages NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly").[76][77] and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park ").[78][79][80]Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.[81]Alphabet City comprises Avenues A, B, C and D, to which its name refers. Some have simple folkloric names like Hell's Kitchen alongside their more official but lesser used title Clinton.

In Manhattan, uptown means north (more precisely north-northeast, which is the direction the island and its street grid system is oriented) and downtown means south (south-southwest).[86] This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term uptown also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 72nd Street and downtown to the southern portion below 14th Street,[87] with Midtown covering the area in between, though definitions can be rather fluid depending on the situation.

Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street); street addresses start at Fifth Avenue and increase heading away from Fifth Avenue, at a rate of 100 per block in most places.[87] South of Waverly Place in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. Though the grid does start with 1st Street, just north of Houston Street (pronounced HOW-stin), the grid does not fully take hold until north of 14th Street, where nearly all east-west streets are numerically identified, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island. Streets in Midtown are usually one way with a few exceptions (14th, 34th and 42nd to name a few). The rule of thumb is odd numbered streets run west while evens run east.[62]

Although located at around 41°N, Manhattan has a humid continental climate (Dfa).[88] The city's coastal position keeps temperatures relatively warmer than those of inland regions during winter, helping to moderate the amount of snow, which averages 25 inches (63.5 cm) each year.[89] Spring and fall in New York City are mild, while summer is very warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher recorded from 18 to 25 days on average during the season.[88] The city's long-term climate patterns are affected by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year-long warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences the frequency and severity of hurricanes and coastal storms in the region.[90]

Temperature records have been set as high as 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936 and as low as −15 °F (−26 °C) on February 9, 1934. Temperatures have hit 103 °F (39 °C) as recently as July 2012 and dropped to just 1 °F (−17 °C) as recently as January 2004.

Summer evening temperatures are elevated by the urban heat island effect, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow.[91]

At the 2010 Census, there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% since 2000.
According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there were 1,634,795 people residing in Manhattan on July 1, 2008.[95] As of the 2000 Census, the population density of New York County was 66,940.1 per square mile (25,849.9/km²), the highest population density of any county in the United States.[96] If 2008 census estimates are accurate, then the population density now exceeds 71,201 people per square mile. In 1910, at the height of European immigration to New York, Manhattan's population density reached a peak of 101,548 people per square mile (39,222.9/km²). There were 798,144 housing units in 2000 at an average density of 34,756.7 per square mile (13,421.8/km²).[63] Only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind the Bronx.[97]

According to the 2010 Census, 48.0% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 12.9% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 0.1% non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native, 11.2% non-Hispanic Asian, 0.3% from some other race (non-Hispanic) and 1.9% of two or more (non-Hispanic) races. 25.4% of Manhattan's population was of Hispanic or Latino origin, of any race.

Manhattan has the second highest percentage of non-Hispanic Whites (48%) of New York City's boroughs, after Staten Island (where non-Hispanic Whites make 64.0% of residents).

The New York City Department of City Planning projects that Manhattan's population will increase by 289,000 people between 2000 and 2030, an increase of 18.8% over the period, second only to Staten Island, while the rest of the city is projected to grow by 12.7% over the same period. The school-age population is expected to grow 4.4% by 2030, in contrast to a small decline in the city as a whole. The elderly population is forecast to grow by 57.9%, with the borough adding 108,000 persons ages 65 and over, compared to 44.2% growth citywide.[98]

According to the 2009 American Community Survey,[99] the average household size was 2.11, and the average family size was 3.21. Approximately 59.4% of the population over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher. Approximately 27.0% of the population is foreign-born, and 61.7% of the population over the age of 5 speak only English at home. People of Irish ancestry make up 7.8% of the population, while Italian Americans make up 6.8% of the population. German Americans and Russian Americans make up 7.2% and 6.2% of the population respectively.[100]

There were 738,644 households. 25.2% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 59.1% were non-families. 17.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them. 48% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was two and the average family size was 2.99.

Manhattan's population was spread out with 16.8% under the age of 18, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 38.3% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.9 males.

Manhattan is one of the highest-income places in the United States with a population greater than one million. Based on IRS data for the 2004 tax year, New York County (Manhattan) had the highest average federal income tax liability per return in the country. Average tax liability was $25,875, representing 20% of adjusted gross income.[102] As of 2002, Manhattan had the highest per capita income of any county in the country.[103]

The Manhattan ZIP Code 10021, on the Upper East Side is home to more than 100,000 people and has a per capita income of over $90,000.[104] It is one of the largest concentrations of extreme wealth in the United States. Most Manhattan neighborhoods are not as wealthy. The median income for a household in the county was $47,030, and the median income for a family was $50,229. Males had a median income of $51,856 versus $45,712 for females. The per capita income for the county was $42,922. About 17.6% of families and 20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.8% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.[105]

Lower Manhattan (Manhattan south of Houston Street) is more economically diverse. While the Financial District had few non-commercial tenants after the 1950s, the area has seen a surge in its residential population, with estimates showing over 30,000 residents living in the area as of 2005, a jump from the 15,000 to 20,000 before the September 11, 2001 attacks.[106]

Manhattan is religiously diverse. The largest religious affiliation is the Roman Catholic Church, whose adherents constitute 564,505 persons (more than 36% of the population) and maintain 110 congregations. Jews comprise the second largest religious group, with 314,500 persons (20.5%) in 102 congregations. They are followed by Protestants, with 139,732 adherents (9.1%) and Muslims, with 37,078 (2.4%).[107]

The borough is also experiencing a baby boom. Since 2000, the number of children under age five living in Manhattan grew by more than 32%.[108]

Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter, which has provided for a strong mayor-council system since its revision in 1989.[109] The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Manhattan.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment'sEqual Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.[110]

Since 1990, the largely powerless Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Manhattan's Borough President is Scott Stringer, elected as a Democrat in 2005.[111]

Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of New York County since 2010.[112] Manhattan has ten City Council members, the third largest contingent among the five boroughs. It also has twelve administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents.
As the host of the UN, the borough is home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates.[113] It is also the home of New York City Hall, the seat of New York City government housing the Mayor of New York City and the New York City Council. The mayor's staff and thirteen municipal agencies are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, completed in 1916, one of the largest governmental buildings in the world.[114]

The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Registered Republicans are a minority in the borough, only constituting approximately 12% of the electorate. Registered Republicans are more than 20% of the electorate only in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Financial District. The Democrats hold 66.1% of those registered in a party. 21.9% of the voters were unaffiliated (independents).[116]

Manhattan is divided between four congressional districts, all of which are represented by Democrats.

No Republican has won the presidential election in Manhattan since 1924, when Calvin Coolidge won a plurality of the New York County vote over Democrat John W. Davis, 41.20%–39.55%. Warren G. Harding was the most recent Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the Manhattan vote, with 59.22% of the 1920 vote.[117] In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 82.1% of the vote in Manhattan and Republican George W. Bush received 16.7%.[118] The borough is the most important source of funding for presidential campaigns in the United States; in 2004, it was home to six of the top seven ZIP codes in the nation for political contributions.[119] The top ZIP code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the United States presidential election for all presidential candidates, including both Kerry and Bush during the 2004 election.[120]

Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States became a magnet for immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their home countries. After arriving in New York, many new arrivals ended up living in squalor in the slums of the Five Points neighborhood, an area between Broadway and the Bowery, northeast of New York City Hall. By the 1820s, the area was home to many gambling dens and brothels, and was known as a dangerous place to go. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the horrendous living conditions he had seen.[124] The area was so notorious that it even caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who visited the area before his Cooper Union speech in 1860.[125] The predominantly Irish Five Points Gang was one of the country's first major organized crime entities.

As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang.[126] The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established La Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period.[127] from 1920–1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.[127]

New York City experienced a sharp increase in crime during the 1960s and 1970s, with a near fivefold jump in the total number of police-recorded crimes, from 21.09 per thousand in 1960 to a peak of 102.66 in 1981. Homicides continued to increase in the city for another decade, with murders recorded by the NYPD jumping from 390 in 1960, to 1,117 in 1970, 1,812 in 1980, and reaching its peak of 2,262 in 1990 mainly because of the crack epidemic. Starting circa 1990, New York City saw record declines in homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, violent crime, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and property crime, a trend that has continued to today.[128]

Based on 2005 data, New York City has the lowest crime rate among the ten largest cities in the United States.[129] The city as a whole ranked fourth nationwide in the 13th annual Morgan Quitno survey of the 32 cities surveyed with a population above 500,000.[130] The New York City Police Department, with 36,400 officers, is larger than the next four largest U.S. departments combined. The NYPD's counter-terrorism division, with 1,000 officers assigned, is larger than the FBI's.[129] The NYPD's CompStat system of crime tracking, reporting and monitoring has been credited with a drop in crime in New York City that has far surpassed the drop elsewhere in the United States.[131]

Since 1990, crime in Manhattan has plummeted in all categories tracked by the CompStat profile. A borough that saw 503 murders in 1990 has seen a drop of nearly 88% to 62 in 2008. Robbery and burglary are down by more than 80% during the period, and auto theft has been reduced by more than 93%. In the seven major crime categories tracked by the system, overall crime has declined by more than 75% since 1990, and year-to-date statistics through May 2009 show continuing declines.[132]

The Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the city and the world from 1930–1931

The Roaring Twenties saw a race to the sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown.[139] At 927 feet (282 m), 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in an astonishing eleven months as the headquarters of the Bank of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title.[140] At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed plans to build the structure's trademark 185-foot (56 m)-high spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to 1,046 feet (319 m) and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929.[141] Both buildings were soon surpassed, with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower soaring 1,250 feet (381 m) to the top of the building. The 203 ft (62 m) high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m).[142][143]

The Empire State Building was the world's tallest building from 1931 to 1972, and was once again the tallest building in the city, from September 11, 2001 until April 29, 2012, when One World Trade Center, under construction, passed its roof height of 1250 feet. Its overall height, counting the antenna, of 1454 feet, will not be passed until One World Trade Center erects its antenna.

The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At 1,368 ft (417 m) and 1,362 ft (415 m), the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972, until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears tower located in Chicago).[144]One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently under construction and is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2013.[145]

Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively (Fifth Avenue retains its name along the eastern border). The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The 843 acres (3.411 km2) park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The 6-mile (9.7 km) road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 pm, when automobile traffic is banned.[150]

While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly 3,000,000 cubic yards (2,300,000 m3) of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs.[151]

17.8% of the borough, a total of 2,686 acres (10.870 km2), are devoted to parkland. Almost 70% of Manhattan's space devoted to parks is located outside of Central Park, including 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts and many other amenities.[152]

The African Burial Ground National Monument at Duane Street preserves a site containing the remains of over 400 Africans buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. The remains were found in 1991 during the construction of the Foley Square Federal Office Building.

Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.3 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost two-thirds of all jobs in New York City.[154] Manhattan's daytime population swells to 3.94 million, with commuters adding a net 1.34 million people to the population. This commuter influx of 1.61[155] million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any other county or city in the country, and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.[156][157]

Its most important economic sector is the finance industry, whose 280,000 workers earned more than half of all the wages paid in the borough. The securities industry, best known by its center in Wall Street, forms the largest segment of the city's financial sector, accounting for over 50% of the financial services employment. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the five largest securities-trading firms in the U.S. had their headquarters in Manhattan.[158][159]

In 2006, those in the Manhattan financial industry earned an average weekly pay of about $8,300 (including bonuses), while the average weekly pay for all industries was about $2,500. This was the highest in the country's 325 largest counties, and the salary growth of 8% was the highest among the ten largest counties. Pay in the borough was 85% higher than the $784 pay earned weekly nationwide and nearly double the amount earned by workers in the outer boroughs. The health care sector represents about 11% of the borough's jobs and 4% of total compensation, with workers taking home about $900 per week.[160]

Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in Manhattan.[164] "Madison Avenue" is often used metonymously to refer to the entire advertising field, after Madison Avenue became identified with the advertising industry after the explosive growth in the area in the 1920s.

Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions, with manufacturing (39,800 workers) and construction (31,600) accounting for a small fraction of the borough's employment.[154][165]

Historically, this corporate presence has been complemented by many independent retailers, though a recent influx of national chain stores has caused many to lament the creeping homogenization of Manhattan.[166]

Manhattan has been the scene of many important American cultural movements. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched on Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of female independence, reflecting the alliance of labor and suffrage movements.[167]

The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States. Manhattan's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the American pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Perhaps no other artist is as associated with the downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s as Andy Warhol, who socialized at clubs like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54.

A popular haven for art, the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea is widely known for its galleries and cultural events, with more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from both upcoming and established artists.[168][169]

Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats, almost all in and around Times Square.[170]Off-Broadway theatres feature productions in venues with 100–500 seats.[171] A little more than a mile from Times Square is the Lincoln Center, home to one of the world's most prestigious opera houses, that of the Metropolitan Opera.[172]

Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; even some natives of New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan will describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city".[173]

The borough has a place in several American idioms. The phrase a New York minute is meant to convey a very short time, sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible". It refers to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan.[174] The term "melting pot" was first popularly coined to describe the densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side in Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, which was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set by Zangwill in New York City in 1908.[175] The iconic Flatiron Building is said to have been the source of the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building.[176] The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stablehands to refer to New York City's racetracks and named his racing column "Around The Big Apple." Jazz musicians adopted the term to refer to the city as the world's jazz capital, and a 1970s ad campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau helped popularize the term.[177]

The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League have played in the various locations of Madison Square Garden since their founding in the 1926–1927 season. The Rangers were predated by the New York Americans, who started play in the Garden the previous season, lasting until the team folded after the 1941–1942 NHL season, a season it played in the Garden as the Brooklyn Americans.[189]

The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League played their home games at Downing Stadium for two seasons, starting in 1974. In 1975, the team signed Pelé, officially recorded by FIFA as the world's greatest soccer player, to a $4.5 million contract, drawing a capacity crowd of 22,500 to watch him lead the team to a 2–0 victory.[190] The playing pitch and facilities at Downing Stadium were in dreadful condition though and as the team's popularity grew they too left for Yankee Stadium, and then Giants Stadium. The stadium was demolished in 2002 to make way for the $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, which includes an Olympic-standard 400-meter running track and, as part of Pele's and the Cosmos' legacy, includes a FIFA-approved floodlit soccer stadium that hosts matches between the 48 youth teams of a Manhattan soccer club.[191][192]

Modern New York City is familiar to many people around the globe thanks to its popularity as a setting for television series and films. Notable television shows set in Manhattan include I Love Lucy, Friends, Saturday Night Live, and Seinfeld.

The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox are all headquartered in Manhattan, as are many cable channels, including MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. In 1971, WLIB became New York's first black-owned radio station and the crown jewel of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. A co-founder of Inner City was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and long one of the city's most powerful black leaders.[194] WLIB began broadcasts for the African-American community in 1949 and regularly interviewed civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and aired live broadcasts from conferences of the NAACP. Influential WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States. WNYC, comprising an AM and FM signal, has the largest public radio audience in the nation and is the most-listened to commercial or non-commercial radio station in Manhattan.[195]WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.

In the early days of Manhattan, wood construction and poor access to water supplies left the city vulnerable to fires. In 1776, shortly after the Continental Army evacuated Manhattan and left it to the British, a massive fire broke out destroying one-third of the city and some 500 houses.[197]

The rise of immigration near the turn of the 20th century left major portions of Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, densely packed with recent arrivals, crammed into unhealthy and unsanitary housing. Tenements were usually five-stories high, constructed on the then-typical 25x100 lots, with "cockroach landlords" exploiting the new immigrants.[198][199] By 1929, stricter fire codes and the increased use of elevators in residential buildings, were the impetus behind a new housing code that effectively ended the tenement as a form of new construction, though many tenement buildings survive today on the East Side of the borough.[199]

Today, Manhattan offers a wide array of public and private housing options. There were 798,144 housing units in Manhattan as of the 2000 Census, at an average density of 34,756.7 per square mile (13,421.8/km²).[63] Only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind The Bronx.[97] Although the city of New York has the highest average cost for rent in the United States, it simultaneously hosts a higher average of income per capita. Because of this, rent is a lower percentage of annual income than in several other American cities.[200]

Manhattan is unique in the US for intense use of public transport and lack of private car ownership. While 88% of Americans nationwide drive to their jobs and only 5% use public transport, mass transit is the dominant form of travel for residents of Manhattan, with 72% of borough residents using public transport and only 18% driving to work.[201][202] According to the United States Census, 2000, more than 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.[203]

The New York City Subway, the largest subway system in the world by track mileage and the largest by number of stations, is the primary means of travel within the city, linking every borough except Staten Island. There are 147 subway stations in Manhattan. A second subway, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) system, connects six stations in Manhattan to northern New Jersey. Passengers pay fares with pay-per-ride MetroCards, which are valid on all city buses and subways, as well as on PATH trains. A one-way fare on the bus or subway is $2.25,[205] and PATH costs $2.00.[206] There are 7-day and 30-day MetroCards that allow unlimited trips on all subways (except PATH) and MTA bus routes (except for express buses).[207] The PATH QuickCard is being phased out, and both PATH and the MTA are testing "smart card" payment systems to replace the MetroCard.[208]Commuter rail services operating to and from Manhattan are the Long Island Rail Road (which connects Manhattan and other New York City boroughs to Long Island), the Metro-North Railroad (which connects Manhattan to Upstate New York and Southwestern Connecticut) and New Jersey Transit trains to various points in New Jersey.

MTA New York City Transit offers a wide variety of local buses within Manhattan. An extensive network of express bus routes serves commuters and other travelers heading into Manhattan. The bus system served 784 million passengers citywide in 2011, the highest in the nation, and more than double the ridership of the second-place Los Angeles system.[209]

New York's iconic yellow cabs, which number 13,087 city-wide and must have the requisite medallion authorizing the pick up of street hails, are ubiquitous in the borough.[210] Manhattan also sees tens of thousands of bicycle commuters. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, one of two commuter cable car systems in North America, whisks commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in less than five minutes, and has been serving the island since 1978. (The other system in North America is the Portland Aerial Tram.)[211][212] The Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, annually carries over 21 million passengers on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) run between Manhattan and Staten Island. Each weekday, five vessels transport about 65,000 passengers on 109 boat trips.[213][214] The ferry has been fare-free since 1997, when the then-50-cent fare was eliminated.[215]

The metro region's commuter rail lines converge at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, on the west and east sides of Midtown Manhattan, respectively. They are the two busiest rail stations in the United States. About one-third of users of mass transit and two-thirds of railway passengers in the country live in New York and its suburbs.[216]Amtrak provides inter-city passenger rail service from Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York, New England; cross-border service to Toronto and Montreal; and destinations in the South and Midwest.

The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[217] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson to Manhattan's piers. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.[218] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[219]

Today, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection provides water to residents fed by a 2,000-square-mile (5,200 km2) watershed in the Catskill Mountains. Because the watershed is in one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States, the natural water filtration process remains intact. As a result, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough to require only chlorination to ensure its purity at the tap under normal conditions.[227][228] Water comes to Manhattan through New York City Water Tunnel No. 1 and Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1917 and 1936, respectively. Construction started in 1970 continues on New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, which will double the system's existing 1.2 billion gallon-a-day capacity while providing a much-needed backup to the two other tunnels.[229]

The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal.[230] The bulk of the city's trash ultimately is disposed at mega-dumps in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio (via transfer stations in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens) since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.[231] A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities. Like New York City, New Jersey and much of Greater New York relies on exporting its trash to far-flung areas.

As of 2003, 52.3% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree, the fifth highest of all counties in the country.[234] By 2005, about 60% of residents were college graduates and some 25% had earned advanced degrees, giving Manhattan one of the nation's densest concentrations of highly educated people.[235]

Manhattan is served by the New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country.[239] The five units of the Central Library—Mid-Manhattan Library, Donnell Library Center, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library and the Science, Industry and Business Library—are all located in Manhattan.[240] More than 35 other branch libraries are located in the borough.[241]

^Sorrentino, Christopher. "When He Was Seventeen", The New York Times, September 16, 2007. Accessed December 22, 2007. "In 1980 there were still the vestigial remains of the various downtown revolutions that had reinvigorated New York's music and art scenes and kept Manhattan in the position it had occupied since the 1940s as the cultural center of the world."

^ abHolloway, Marguerite. "Urban tactics; I'll Take Mannahatta", The New York Times, May 16, 2004, accessed June 30, 2009. "He could envision what Henry Hudson saw in 1609 as he sailed along Mannahatta, which in the Lenape dialect most likely meant island of many hills."

^Seymour I. Schwartz: The Mismapping of America. p.42; The University of Rochester Press (2008) ISBN 978-1-58046-302-7

^Rankin, Rebecca B., Cleveland Rodgers (1948). New York: the World's Capital City, Its Development and Contributions to Progress. Harper.

^"Henry Hudson and His Exploration"Scientific American, September 25, 1909, accessed May 1, 2007. "This was a vain hope however, and the conviction must finally have come to the heart of the intrepid adventurer that once again he was foiled in his repeated quest for the northwest passage ... On the following day the "Half Moon" let go her anchor inside of Sandy Hook. The week was spent in exploring the bay with a shallop, or small boat, and "they found a good entrance between two headlands" (the Narrows) "and thus entered on the September 11 into as fine a river as can be found.""

^Williams, Jasmin K. "New York – The Empire States", The New York Post, November 22, 2006. Accessed May 19, 2007. "In 1647, Dutch leader Peter Stuyvesant arrived with an iron fist to put an end to the colony's rampant crime and restore order."

^Blair, Cynthia. "1858: Central Park Opens", Newsday. Accessed May 29, 2007. "Between 1853 and 1856, city commissioners purchased more than 700 acres (280 ha) from 59th Street to 106th Street between Fifth and Eighth Avenues to create Central Park, the nation's first public park as well as its first landscaped park."

^Rybczynski, Witold. "Olmsted's Triumph" at the Wayback Machine (archived November 28, 2006)., Smithsonian (magazine), July 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007. "By 1876, landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and architect Calvert Vaux had transformed the swampy, treeless 50 blocks between Harlem and midtown Manhattan into the first landscaped park in the United States."

^Ward, Geoffrey C. "Gangs of New York", a review of Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker, The New York Times, October 6, 2002. Accessed June 30, 2009. "The New York draft riots remain the worst civil disturbance in American history: according to the historian Adrian Cook, 119 people are known to have been killed, mostly rioters or onlookers who got too close when federal troops, brought back from the battlefield to restore order, started shooting."

^"New Jerseyans' Claim To Liberty I. Rejected", The New York Times, October 6, 1987. Accessed June 30, 2009. "The Supreme Court today refused to strip the Statue of Liberty of its status as a New Yorker. The Court, without comment, turned away a move by a two New Jerseyans to claim jurisdiction over the landmark for their state."

^Harris, Paul. "How the mean streets of New York were tamed", The Guardian, January 15, 2006. Accessed June 29, 2009. "Alongside the changed tactics came a fall in the crack epidemic that had swept the city in the Eighties. By the Nineties police had driven dealers off the streets, thus reducing drug-related violence.... The figures speak for themselves. In 1990, 2,245 New Yorkers were murdered. Last year the number was 537, the lowest for 40 years."

^New York City Administrative Code Section 2-202 Division into boroughs and boundaries thereof – Division Into Boroughs And Boundaries Thereof., Lawyer Research Center. Accessed May 16, 2007. "The borough of Manhattan shall consist of the territory known as New York county, which shall contain all that part of the city and state, including that portion of land commonly known as Marble Hill and included within the county of New York and borough of Manhattan for all purposes pursuant to chapter nine hundred thirty-nine of the laws of nineteen hundred eighty-four and further including the islands called Manhattan Island, Governor's Island, Bedloe's Island, Ellis Island, Franklin D. Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island and Oyster Island..."

^ abHow New York Works, How Stuff Works, accessed June 30, 2009. "The island is 22.7 square miles (59 km2), 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide (at its widest point)."

^ abSilverman, Justin Rocket. "Sunny delight in city sight", Newsday, May 27, 2006. "'Manhattanhenge' occurs Sunday, a day when a happy coincidence of urban planning and astrophysics results in the setting sun lining up exactly with every east-west street in the borough north of 14th Street. Similar to Stonehenge, which is directly aligned with the summer-solstice sun, "Manhattanhenge" catches the sun descending in perfect alignment between buildings. The local phenomenon occurs twice a year, on May 28 and July 12...

^Senft, Bret. "If You're Thinking of Living In/TriBeCa; Families Are the Catalyst for Change", The New York Times, September 26, 1993. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Families have overtaken commerce as the catalyst for change in this TRIangle BElow CAnal Street (although the only triangle here is its heart: Hudson Street meeting West Broadway at Chambers Street, with Canal its north side) ... Artists began seeking refuge from fashionable SoHo (SOuth of HOuston) as early as the mid-70s."

^Cohen, Joyce. "If You're Thinking of Living In/Nolita; A Slice of Little Italy Moving Upscale", The New York Times, May 17, 1998. Accessed June 30, 2009. "NO ONE is quite certain what to call this part of town. Nolita—north of Little Italy, that is—certainly pinpoints it geographically. The not-quite-acronym was apparently coined several years ago by real-estate brokers seeking to give the area at least a little cachet."

^Bruni, Frank. "The Grounds He Stamped: The New York Of Ginsberg", The New York Times, April 7, 1997. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Indeed, for all the worldwide attention that Mr. Ginsberg received, he was always a creature and icon principally of downtown Manhattan, his world view forged in its crucible of political and sexual passions, his eccentricities nurtured by those of its peculiar demimonde, his individual myth entwined with that of the bohemian East Village in which he made his home. He embodied the East Village and the Lower East Side, Bill Morgan, a friend and Mr. Ginsberg's archivist, said yesterday."

^Dunlap, David W. "The New Chelsea's Many Faces", The New York Times, November 13, 1994. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Gay Chelsea's role has solidified with the arrival of A Different Light bookstore, a cultural cornerstone that had been housed for a decade in an 800-square-foot (74 m2) nook at 548 Hudson Street, near Perry Street. It now takes up more than 5,000 square feet (500 m2) at 151 West 19th Street and its migration seems to embody a northward shift of gay life from Greenwich Village... Because of Chelsea's reputation, Mr. Garmendia said, single women were not likely to move in. But single men did. "The whole neighborhood became gay during the 70's", he said."

^Chinatown: A World of Dining, Shopping, and History, NYC & Company, accessed June 30, 2009. "No visit to New York City is complete without exploring the sights, cuisines, history, and shops of the biggest Chinatown in the United States. The largest concentration of Chinese people—150,000—in the Western Hemisphere are in a two-square-mile area in downtown Manhattan that's loosely bounded by Lafayette, Worth, and Grand streets and East Broadway."

^Petzold, Charles. " How Far from True North are the Avenues of Manhattan?", accessed April 30, 2007. "However, the orientation of the city's avenues was fixed to be parallel with the axis of Manhattan Island and has only a casual relationship to true north and south. Maps that are oriented to true north (like the one at the right) show the island at a significant tilt. In truth, avenues run closer to northeast and southwest than north and south."

^"Population Density", Geographic Information Systems – GIS of Interest. Accessed June 30, 2009. "What I discovered is that out of the 3140 counties listed in the Census population data only 178 counties were calculated to have a population density over one person per acre. Not surprisingly, New York County (which contains Manhattan) had the highest population density with a calculated 104.218 persons per acre."

^Biography of Cyrus R. Vance, New York County District Attorney's Office. Accessed April 27, 2007. "He returned to private life until 1974, when he made the first of eight successful bids for election as District Attorney of New York County."

^Walsh, John, "The Five Points", Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area, September 1994. Accessed May 16, 2007. "The Five Points slum was so notorious that it attracted the attention of candidate Abraham Lincoln who visited the area before his Cooper Union Address."

^Al Capone, Chicago History Museum. Accessed May 16, 2007. "Capone was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York.... He became part of the notorious Five Points gang in Manhattan and worked in gangster Frankie Yale's Brooklyn dive, the Harvard Inn, as a bouncer and bartender."

^"Big Span Project Initiated by City; Manhattan Plaza of Brooklyn Bridge Would Be Rebuilt to Cope With Traffic Increase COST IS PUT AT $6,910,000 Demolition Program is Set – Street System in the Area Also Faces Rearranging", The New York Times, July 24, 1954. p. 15.

^Gray, Christopher. " Streetscapes/Singer Building; Once the Tallest Building, But Since 1967 a Ghost", The New York Times, January 2, 2005. Accessed May 15, 2007. "The 41-story Singer Building, the tallest in the world in 1908 when it was completed at Broadway and Liberty Street, was until September 11, 2001, the tallest structure ever to be demolished. The building, an elegant Beaux-Arts tower, was one of the most painful losses of the early preservation movement when it was razed in 1967.... Begun in 1906, the Singer Building incorporated Flagg's model for a city of towers, with the 1896 structure reconstructed as the base, and a 65-foot-square shaft rising 612 feet (187 m) high, culminating in a bulbous mansard and giant lantern at the peak."

^"Denies Altering Plans for Tallest Building; Starrett Says Height of Bank of Manhattan Structure Was Not Increased to Beat Chrysler.", The New York Times, October 20, 1929. p. 14.

^"Bank of Manhattan Built in Record Time; Structure 927 feet (283 m) High, Second Tallest in World, Is Erected in Year of Work.", The New York Times, May 6, 1930. p. 53.

^Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes: The Chrysler Building; Skyscraper's Place in the Sun", The New York Times, December 17, 1995. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Then Chrysler and Van Alen again revised the design, this time in order to win a height competition with the 921-foot (281 m) tower then rising at 40 Wall Street. This was done in secret, using as a staging area the huge square fire-tower shaft, intended to vent smoke from the stairways. Inside the shaft, Van Alen had teams of workers assemble the framework for a 185-foot-high spire that, when lifted into place in the fall of 1929, made the Chrysler building, at 1046 feet, 4.75 inches high, the tallest in the world."

^"Rivalry for Height is Seen as Ended; Empire State's Record to Stand for Many Years, Builders and Realty Men Say. Practical Limit Reached; Its Top Rises 1,250 feet (380 m), but Staff Carrying Instruments Extends Pinnacle to 1265.5 Feet.", The New York Times, May 2, 1931. p. 7.

^Barss, Karen. "The History of Skyscrapers: A race to the top", Information Please. Accessed May 17, 2007. "The Empire State Building would reign supreme among skyscrapers for 41 years until 1972, when it was surpassed by the World Trade Center (1,368 feet, 110 stories). Two years later, New York City lost the distinction of housing the tallest building when the Willis Tower was constructed in Chicago (1450 feet, 110 stories)."

^Noonan, Patrica. Testimony on Moynihan Station Draft EIS, Partnership for New York City, testimony dated May 31, 2006, accessed April 26, 2007. "Combined with the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the Far West Side promises to become the logical extension of the largest central business district in the country."

^Weber, Bruce. "Critic's Notebook: Theater's Promise? Look Off Broadway", The New York Times, July 2, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007. "It's also true that what constitutes Broadway is easy to delineate; it's a universe of 39 specified theaters, which all have at least 500 seats. Off Broadway is generally considered to comprise theaters from 99 to 499 seats (anything less is thought of as Off Off), which ostensibly determines the union contracts for actors, directors and press agents."

^Music Details for Sunday January 5, 1997, ABC Classic FM. Accessed June 19, 2007. "James Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut at the age of 27, conducting Tosca.... Since the mid eighties he has held the role of Artistic Director, and it is under his tenure that the Met has become the most prestigious opera house in the world."

^Purdum, Todd S. "Political memo; An Embattled City Hall Moves to Brooklyn", The New York Times, February 22, 1992. Accessed June 30, 2009. ""Leaders in all of them fear that recent changes in the City Charter that shifted power from the borough presidents to the City Council have diminished government's recognition of the sense of identity that leads people to say they live in the Bronx, and to describe visiting Manhattan as 'going to the city.'"

^Dolkart, Andrew S. "The Architecture and Development of New York City: The Birth of the Skyscraper – Romantic Symbols", Columbia University, accessed May 15, 2007. "It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area."

^President's Bio, WNYC, accessed May 1, 2007. "Heard by over 1.2 million listeners each week, WNYC radio is the largest public radio station in the country and is dedicated to producing broadcasting that extends New York City's cultural riches to public radio stations nationwide."

^Community Celebrates Public Access TV's 35th Anniversary, Manhattan Neighborhood Network press release dated August 6, 2006, accessed April 28, 2007. "Public access TV was created in the 1970s to allow ordinary members of the public to make and air their own TV shows—and thereby exercise their free speech. It was first launched in the U.S. in Manhattan July 1, 1971, on the Teleprompter and Sterling Cable systems, now Time Warner Cable."

^Great Fire of 1776, City University of New York. Accessed April 30, 2007. "Some of Washington's advisors suggested burning New York City so that the British would gain little from its capture. This idea was abandoned and Washington withdrew his forces from the city on September 12, 1776. Three days later the British occupied the city and on September 21, a fire broke out in the Fighting Cocks Tavern. Without the city's firemen present and on duty, the fire quickly spread. A third of the city burnt and 493 houses destroyed."

^ abPeterson, Iver. "Tenements of 1880s Adapt to 1980s", The New York Times, January 3, 1988, accessed June 30, 2009. "Usually five stories tall and built on a 25-foot (7.6 m) lot, their exteriors are hung with fire escapes and the interiors are laid out long and narrow—in fact, the apartments were dubbed railroad flats."

^"New York City Pedestrian Level of Service Study – Phase I, 2006", New York City Department of City Planning, April 2006, p. 4. Accessed May 17, 2007. "In the year 2000, 88% of workers over 16 years old in the U.S. used a car, truck or van to commute to work, while approximately 5% used public transportation and 3% walked to work.... In Manhattan, the borough with the highest population density (66,940 people/sq mi. in year 2000; 1,564,798 inhabitants) and concentration of business and tourist destinations, only 18% of the working population drove to work in 2000, while 72% used public transportation and 8% walked."

^Lee, Jennifer 8. "Midair Rescue Lifts Passengers From Stranded East River Tram", The New York Times, April 19, 2006. Accessed February 28, 2008. "The system, which calls itself the only aerial commuter tram in the country, has been featured in movies including City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal; Nighthawks, with Sylvester Stallone; and Spider-Man in 2002."

^Holloway, Lynette. "Mayor to End 50-Cent Fare On S.I. Ferry", The New York Times, April 29, 1997, accessed June 30, 2009. "Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that he would eliminate the 50-cent fare on the Staten Island Ferry starting July 4, saying people who live outside Manhattan should not have to pay extra to travel."

^Lincoln Tunnel Historic Overview, NYCRoads.com. Accessed April 28, 2007. "According to the Port Authority, the Lincoln Tunnel carries approximately 120,000 vehicles per day (AADT), making it the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world."

^Queens-Midtown Tunnel, NYCRoads.com. Accessed April 27, 2007. "The twin-tube tunnel was completed on November 15, 1940. When it opened, it was the largest non-Federal project of its time."

^"President the 'First' to Use Midtown Tube; Precedence at Opening Denied Hundreds of Motorists", The New York Times, November 9, 1940. p. 19.

^Ray, C. Claiborne. "Q&A", The New York Times, May 12, 1992. Accessed June 30, 2009. "In a steam-powered system, the whole cycle of compression, cooling, expansion and evaporation takes place in a closed system, like that in a refrigerator or electrical air-conditioner. The difference, Mr. Sarno said, is that the mechanical power to run the compressor comes from steam-powered turbines, not electrical motors."

^McGeehan, Patrick. "New York Area Is a Magnet For Graduates", The New York Times, August 16, 2006. Accessed March 27, 2008. "In Manhattan, nearly three out of five residents were college graduates and one out of four had advanced degrees, forming one of the highest concentrations of highly educated people in any American city."